Age:  Mid twenties (but she has had a very hard life and is often mistaken for late thirties)

Niki served in the Marines for several years and left with an honorable discharge (shortly before it became dishonorable).
 

Surveillance Photograph - the Street Years

Life in the military became very difficult for Niki - she had difficulty differentiating between orders and instructions from her superior officers and the voices in her head.  She also expended a vast amount of energy fighting very strong urges to use her martial arts to get her point across.  Therefore, she found it necessary to turn her back on the order and regimen of the military lifestyle and so lived on the streets and sheltered with a number of different gangs.  After a couple of years on the streets, Niki became bored... so she prompted a lifestyle change.

Niki "talked" her way into a waitressing position in one of those funky little art deco cafes that were generally used for the more interesting business deals.  It was not long before Niki became almost respectable.  All was going very well - life was interesting, the meager salary (plus tips) came close to paying for her lifestyle.  The gap was made up by the connections she had made during her time on the streets.

Snap shot just before Niki's court case

Of course this could not last!  (If it had it would have been a rather boring biography)  Niki had her day in court...and while she was waiting to be sentenced she realised that her misspent youth was not just going to be a lifetime of joyful memories, it was going to impact on the physical plane as well.  The sentence handed down was not that much of a shock, she knew that in all likelihood she would be sentenced to the Prison Battalion - she was not proved wrong.  She now is enjoying that militaristic lifestyle that she thought she had left behind.